Indiana high schooler hopes to fight economic inequalities through financial literacy

Most freshmen are just trying to get their feet under them when entering high school. But then there are some like Isaac Hertenstein, who entered high school wanting to tackle problems like economic inequality and financial literacy in youth.

That’s what led Hertenstein, now a junior at Greencastle High School, to start Students Teaching Finance, a nonprofit that aims to use primarily high school-aged students to teach basic financial literacy and personal finance skills to K-8 students in their own community.

Both of Hertenstein’s parents are educators and combining that background with his passion for economics, it seems that it was a natural path for him to start Students Teaching Finance. But one of the main reasons he started the organization was seeing the economic inequalities in his own community.

“Seeing this really inspired me to try and teach financial literacy, specifically to students in grades K-8, in order to plant seeds for future financial learning with the hopes of combating these economic inequalities and financial problems,” Hertenstein said. “And if you were to talk to kids in my high school, they really want to learn about this financial education.”

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Taking a personal finance course is not required for Indiana students to graduate high school and once Hertenstein saw that need in his fellow classmates, he wanted to make them the ones teaching the lessons.

Hertenstein said it means that more high schoolers are understanding basic personal finance concepts before they leave high school, while also helping pass on that knowledge to younger generations.

“Having that kind of role model aspect,” Hertenstein said, "and the mentorship sort of model for teaching can increase our impact on these kids."

How it got started

Hertenstein, along with 40 of his fellow economics classmates, recently taught some personal finance lessons to fourth and fifth-graders at the Tzouanakis Intermediate School in Greencastle, where they learned about things like supply and demand, savings, compound interest and investing.

The curriculum the high schoolers teach is something Hertenstein created himself, after consulting various community members and a couple of professors from universities in Indiana.

Phil Schuman, the executive director of financial wellness and education at Indiana University, was one of those consulting professors and helped coach Hertenstein on how to make lessons that are approachable and attainable, especially for young students who may not know anything about finance concepts.

“You have to reach them where they’re at,” Schuman said. “If it’s not relevant to them at that point, then they’re less likely to pay attention and they’re less likely to retain that knowledge.”

The curriculum is free and available online for anyone to download and Hertenstein encourages people to modify it for the needs that would best serve their community.

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Shuman thinks Hertenstein has done a great job at using the information he’s gathered about personal finance and admires him for tackling such a big issue as economic inequalities. He also noted that much larger systems and issues would need to be addressed first in order to truly make an impact on the issue, but thinks Hertenstein’s work is a great starting point.

“I think what the most important thing that [Hertenstein] is doing, is he is getting people to engage in conversations about finances,” Schuman said. “Our society treats finances as a taboo subject, but what he is doing is getting people to engage in conversation and getting people to understand themselves as it relates to finance.”

Experts have shown that increasing financial literacy earlier on in a person’s life can help reduce income inequalities, and research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that one-third of U.S. wealth inequalities could be accounted for by differences in financial knowledge.

Impacts on younger and older students

Hertenstein’s economics teacher, Kara Jedele, said the impact on the fourth and fifth-grade students was seen as soon as her students left teaching for the first time.

“’We want them to stay longer,’ is what the fourth graders kept telling me,” Jedele said.

She also sees the impact the teaching is having on her own students and said that it’s helped them understand the finance concepts even better and has boosted their own self-confidence.

Indiana students are required to take one credit of economics before graduating, but Jedele said if she had it her way, she would make personal finance the required course.

“Every day we talk about something that is relevant to them,” Jedele said. “We just finished up a unit on paying for college and we had some students who didn’t even know what the FAFSA was.”

Hertenstein’s work with Students Teaching Finance has also been receiving national and local recognition.

Hertenstein recently received the Serve Indiana’s 2022 Youth Volunteerism Award and was also chosen earlier this year to receive a $15,000 reward from the Prudential Financials’ Emerging Visionaries program.

Hertenstein said he will use that money, and other funds raised through grants and fundraising, to help with supplying resources to other chapters like the books included in the curriculum that help teach first graders.

Future plans for Students Teaching Finance

Hertenstein also has large ambitions for Students Teaching Finance and has already worked on getting his program into other states. He said as of now there are chapters in 12 other states, and Hertenstein alone has taught around 550 students just in his community.

Hertenstein said he currently doesn’t know of any chapters starting in Indianapolis but is working on reaching out to education leaders in the city to hopefully start one soon.

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He also wants to affect change on an even larger scale and wants to help advocate for a new law to be created in Indiana that would require high schoolers to take a personal finance course to graduate. Hertenstein says that is still in the beginning stages of happening but wants to keep pushing for more financial literacy to be taught in schools.

As he prepares to head to college soon, Hertenstein says he still plans to keep teaching lessons even when he’s in college.

Jedele said she plans to work with Hertenstein on how to incorporate Students Teaching Finance into the school’s business and entrepreneurship club and hopes to take high schoolers to teach into the grade schools on a more regular basis.

“We would love to get to a point where we are able to teach a lesson to every single kid in Putnam County or at least in Greencastle Community Schools,” Jedele said. “And when it catches on, it’s a great model that we hope other schools in Indiana will catch on to as well.”

To learn more about how to start your own chapter of Students Teaching finance, visit www.studentsteachingfinance.org.

Contact IndyStar reporter Caroline Beck at 317-618-5807 or CBeck@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @CarolineB_Indy.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana student's nonprofit wants to fight economic inequalities